


Her Name Upon The Strand

by elviaprose



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2848835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenna and Cally have some fun at Avon's expense and get to know each other a little better</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Name Upon The Strand

**Author's Note:**

> For pattroughton, on tumblr, for the Blake's 7 Secret Santa
> 
> I’ve ignored the fact that Blake, Avon and Jenna were supposedly alone together on the Liberator for months before collecting Vila and Gan from Cygnus Alpha, because that just doesn’t make sense to me.

In the two months she’d spent aboard the Liberator, Jenna had only occasionally stayed awake into the small hours, but it wasn’t because she didn’t like to. She loved the quiet, still flight deck, loved the sense that she hung suspended in deep, dark space, yet could sit snug and in command of her ship. But she needed to keep rested and sharp, her reflexes tuned as finely as possible, so she didn’t often allow herself the luxury. Now, though, they were far beyond the furthest reaches of civilized space, drifting, resting, and she could lie in tomorrow as late as she liked.

She sat with her boots off and a bookreader in hand, alternately paging through the reader and looking up to watch the viz display she’d asked Zen to provide, until the sound of Cally’s light tread behind her surprised her. 

"Cally. I thought it would be Avon," Jenna said. She gestured to the Go board on the table in front of the couch in explanation. Vila and Avon’s ongoing attempts to out-cheat each other at Go were, by now, common knowledge even to Cally, Blake, and Gan, none of whom played.

At the moment, Vila's pieces were in the better position, but if Avon had his way, they wouldn't be for long. Vila’s preferred method of cheating was to sneak extra pieces onto the board as he and Avon played. He made his moves quickly, throwing Avon off balance. Avon, on the other hand, preferred to re-arrange the pieces in Vila's absence, relying on Vila's spotty memory of the board and his own greater patience for strategy to pull him through. Vila would complain loudly the next day that Avon was cheating him, but he could never manage to reconstruct the placement of the pieces and had to accept Avon’s version. 

Amusingly, it seemed that when Jenna was on the flight deck, Avon wouldn’t cheat. On one other occasion, he’d come in with the obvious intention of re-arranging the board, only to fuss around with a circuit panel for an hour or two before stalking off. She’d expected a repetition of the routine tonight.

"Jenna, you play this game very well. Do you know what Avon will do?" Cally asked.

“I can’t know for certain, but I could guess.” Jenna swung herself up. What would Avon change? She studied the board. There. There. And there. If it wasn’t what Avon would do, it should be. It wasn’t a showy change to the configuration, but it would be enough to put him in rather a good position. 

She pointed out the necessary moves to Cally, wondering as she did if Cally wanted to learn the game, and if Cally did, if she wanted to teach her.

Jenna certainly lacked the patience to teach Gan, and Blake certainly lacked the patience to learn, but Cally...well, if Cally asked, she would do it—but not otherwise.

But instead of examining the reasoning behind Jenna’s strategy and asking a question or two, as Jenna might have expected, Cally simply made each of the moves Jenna had pointed out.

"He won't appreciate the help," Jenna said.

"No," Cally said with a slight smile, "I don't think he will like it." 

Jenna grinned, surprised. Cally seemed in a fey mood tonight, playful, in her own way. Jenna would never have thought to play a trick like that herself, but she admired it, and liked that it flattered Jenna’s own skill--whether that had been Cally’s intent or not. It was this side of Cally she knew best what to do with, and enjoyed best—apart from what she saw of Cally down on missions, of course. In a tight spot Cally was brave, practical, efficient, and unburdened by excessive pride or any other hang-ups that made people difficult to work with. 

“If you wait around, you can have the privilege of seeing his face when he notices,” Jenna said, still grinning. 

“Yes,” Cally said, seating herself on the couch beside Jenna, her palms turned upward on her thighs. 

Cally sat close enough that Jenna could smell the harsh soap they all used. She must have bathed recently, for it to smell so strong. She was wearing a soft white dress that looked comfortable—perhaps Cally even slept in it--but with enough red (in the form of one long panel down the front) to flatter her coloring and enough tailoring to flatter her figure. Jenna had found herself noticing Cally more and more, these last weeks, as her appreciation for Cally’s beauty turned into a frisson of attraction. It wasn’t the sort of thing one needed to act on, which was good, because she knew Cally wasn’t right for her. 

It seemed to Jenna that there was something in Cally that simply wouldn’t be influenced, or touched--metaphorically speaking. No one else, not even Blake, had Cally’s integrity. No matter what Cally did with herself, she seemed to keep the core of her self, which burned with its own blue-hot fire, apart. Blake, for all his resolve, reacted as much as he acted. He was what this world had made him as much as Avon was. They all were. All but Cally. 

It was fanciful, but sometimes talking to Cally felt rather like tracing figures in the sand by the shore, knowing a tide would come soon to smooth them away. How could she take a lover like that? But it was pleasant to look at her, like pressing a warmed cup between her palms.

“Would you tell me something about what you did before, Jenna?” Cally asked.

“What do you want to know?” Most people Jenna had known, including her new companions aboard the Liberator, didn’t ask about other people’s pasts. It could be useful to know if one was dealing with a double-crosser, a deserter, or a snitch, but most knew better than to think they could learn by asking. 

“Anything,” Cally said. “I want to know you, Jenna.”

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Jenna didn’t want to be “known”—but Jenna could tell her a few stories. So she told Cally about the time damage to her hold from collision with an asteroid had released soma vapor into the ship’s ventilator, which had left everyone aboard too happy for safety. 

“I was doped to my eyeballs. I should have drifted the ship until my head cleared, but instead I flew us straight into an asteroid field. I wanted to show off," she said, flashing a grin, “it was a near thing, but I pulled through.” 

Cally looked back at her with dark, serious eyes. Even though she smiled at Jenna, she seemed somehow too intent, too sober for the story Jenna had told her, like she expected it to matter, rather than simply to pass the time. It annoyed Jenna. Perhaps some might have found this deep interest flattering, but she didn’t. Didn’t Cally understand the rules of this sort of storytelling? It was all about flash and glamor, a true story told like a lie, and Cally ought to respond as though that was what it was.

But Cally was always simply herself, whatever the circumstances.

She started in on another story, this one very much like the last, determined, at least, not to change herself to suit Cally’s ways.

*  
There was something about Cally’s manner, though, that soothed her annoyance even as it provoked it, and by the time she heard Avon’s heavy-booted tread in the hall, she was enjoying herself.

"…I realized too late it was Samor and his fleet we were trying to fool. You probably don't know why Star Killer Samor is such a legend among his men. He learns the names and faces of every soldier not just in his fleet--the 8th galactic--but in all of Space Command. 'A Fleet Warden General should know his men,’" Here Jenna deepened her voice. "He said, 'remove your visor, Major.' I did. When he saw me, I thought I was done for--"

“Hello, Avon,” Cally said. 

Jenna broke off. She glanced up at Avon. “Avon, Cally’s taken some interest in learning Go. I said you should be the one to explain what you’ve done with your pieces,” she said, the lie coming easily.

“Well, why not?” Avon said. He seated himself on of the chairs that faced the board, carefully preserving the crease in his trousers. Cally came and sat across from him, her face neutral. 

The moment Avon noticed the changes to the board couldn’t have been more obvious. His face managed to be expressionless, yet somehow expressive of practically every emotion in the book—one of which was amusement, to his credit. 

Also to his credit, Avon could brazen it out with the best of them. He explained the board as it was to Cally, rattling off his explanations in the driest of tones.

But Cally, to Jenna’s great amusement, didn’t let him off at all easily, asking question after question in response. So Jenna helped, prompting Avon to clarify wherever he’d been vague, and suggesting a few questions Cally, not knowing the game, wouldn’t have thought to ask. 

“I see there will be no end to this unless I make one. If you have further interest—perhaps another time,” Avon said, eventually. 

It seemed he couldn’t resist a glance in Jenna’s direction, probably despite his better judgment, and when he looked at her she raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. 

Avon slammed the laser-probe he’d been fiddling with hard onto the table, sending a small ripple of alarm across Cally's shoulders. Cally, though admirably controlled under fire, started easily. Then, back ramrod straight, he strode to the flight deck’s entryway. There he stopped. His mouth opened slightly, and he seemed almost to think better of ignoring the joke that had been played, but he shook his head and walked off--doubtless to brood in private on the mess that had been made of his attempt to cheat. Poor Avon. 

Weeks of tension got the better of Jenna, making her laughter uncontrollable when it came. She put a hand to her chest, trying to steady her breath. Cally didn’t laugh aloud, instead sending Jenna peals of telepathic laughter. 

After a minute, Cally walked over to the decanter that sat on the flight deck—plain water, so it actually still had liquid in it--and poured a glass. She brought it to Jenna, who sipped gratefully.

“Thanks,” she said smiling. Cally sat down close beside her again. She shivered a little when Cally raised a hand and trailed her long fingers over the nape of Jenna’s neck, then up to her cheek in an odd and oddly tender gesture. 

“Jenna, I like you very much. Would you kiss me?” Cally asked. 

She wanted to kiss Cally, she found, and the objections she’d raised to herself before seemed suddenly less important than the feel of Cally’s fingertips against her skin, less important than the delicious complicity she’d felt between them as they’d laughed. 

_I want to please you_ , Cally said into her mind. 

“Not here. Avon might come back, and I’m not giving him a show,” Jenna said.

 _Come to my room, then._

Cally nipped at her ear, a coy, inviting look on her face. Her fingers stroked up and down Jenna’s spine, now.

“All right,” Jenna said, a little ungraciously—which was, she realized, often how she talked to Cally.

*

In one of Jenna’s fantasies, Cally had a bottle of fragrant oil, which she dripped over Jenna’s skin, trailing her lips again and again over the drops, tracing them, tracing the freckles that dotted her skin, the faint scar across her stomach. 

_Well, I could ask if she has any oil_ , Jenna thought wryly.

“Lie still,” she told Cally, instead, when they had both stripped. She circled Cally’s clitoris lightly a few times, then began working her to an efficient orgasm—it was arousing to touch Cally, but not so much that it clouded her mind. She experimented with the pressure, speed, and placement of her fingers until she’d found the right rhythm, then continued it mercilessly. On and on. Cally began to cry out, then became quiet, lost in the sensation. She came with a beautiful, low hoarse sound that trailed off into a series of breathless ohs. 

“Jenna—“ Cally began, sounding perhaps a little distressed.

“I’m not finished,” Jenna said. 

She worked two fingers inside Cally, then moved them until Cally was gasping continuously, sounding almost pained. 

Eventually she took pity and stopped. She let herself look at Cally, her body splayed and sweaty and helpless and beautiful. Then she began working her to orgasm again. 

_Jenna, may I share my pleasure with you?_ Cally asked. 

“Yes,” Jenna found herself saying, before she could think better of it. 

It hit her like a wave crashing over her—not just pleasure, but love. She felt her whole body flush, felt the air rush out of her lungs, and sweat bead on her brow. “Oh, god,” she gasped. She was hardly aware she was still moving her fingers, but when Cally came again, Jenna drowned in blue fire. 

*

Jenna had always likened the act of making love to someone to piercing through armor to a vulnerable heart. She hadn’t understood how it could be anything she really wanted with Cally, who was strongest at her very core. She hadn’t understood how there could be room for Jenna there, where nothing seemed able to touch Cally. She didn’t understand it now, exactly, but she had felt that it could work, and now, in the aftermath, even as she found herself doubting what she’d felt, she saw it was true, saw it in every line of Cally’s body. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted and swollen, her thin chest heaving. 

Cally shivered a little, and Jenna drew the blanket around her tenderly.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from Edmund Spenser's Sonnet, "One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand."


End file.
